


Pilot

by achilleshoney



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Office (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, Gay, M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Stucky - Freeform, The Office, The Office but it's Marvel characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:34:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26593756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achilleshoney/pseuds/achilleshoney
Summary: Insensitive Shield manager Nick Fury welcomes a documentary crew to film the office just as he learns that his branch could be downsized.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Kudos: 11





	1. Shield Inc, Paper Company

**Author's Note:**

> I own none of these characters, plots, or scripts, or any of the rest of Marvel and The Office content. All rights go to Stan Lee (bless his soul), Marvel Comics/Marvel Cinematic Universe, and NBC.

“All right, Bucky, your quarterlies look very good,” Nick Fury shuffled through the sheets that were laying disorderly on his desk in front of him. “How are things going at the library?” He looked up at the calm man sitting in front of him.

“Oh, I told you, I couldn’t close it, so…” Bucky answered.

“So you’ve come to the master for guidance? Is this what you’re saying, Grasshopper?” Fury said, leaning back in his seat, tilting his head.

“Uh, actually, you called me in here. But, yeah.”

“All right, well let me show you how it’s done,” Fury picked up the handset to his telephone and quickly dialed in a number.

“Yes, I’d like to speak to your office manager, please. Yes! Hello, this is Nick Fury, I am the regional manager of Shield paper products. Just wanted to talk to you manager-a-manager.” Bucky sighed and sat back in his hard seat, preparing for the next half hour of watching his boss make money off of one of his usual customers. He looked past the man sitting directly across from him, to the window behind him, busying himself with counting birds on the power lines.

“All right, done deal!” Fury’s voice transitioned into a poor Irish accent, “Thank you very much, sir! You’re a gentleman and a scholar.” He suddenly nodded his head. “Oh, I’m sorry. Okay, I’m sorry. My mistake.” Fury hung up the phone, clearing his throat with discomfort. He glanced at Bucky whose eyes were somewhat hazed over. “That was a woman I was talking to. Had a very low voice. Probably a...smoker.” Bucky nodded his head. Fury concluded with “So that’s how it’s done.”

Nick Fury walked into the entryway of the office, stopping in front of a modern, grey-blue sign that boldly said  _ Shield Inc, Paper Company.  _ He looked hesitantly into the camera. “I’ve, uh, I’ve been at Shield for 12 years. The last four as regional manager. Uh, if you wanna come through here….”

Fury opened the wooden door and reached his hand out to present the monotone-colored office, talking to the camera still. “Ah, see, we have the entire floor. So this is my kingdom, far as the eye can see.” He turned towards the receptionist desk excitedly. “Ah, this is our receptionist Steve.” The camera moved slightly to accommodate both people in the frame. Steve was a small, wiry, blond man who held a pen in his hand. He smiled slightly and turned to talk to Fury.

“Steve, Steven…. Even Stevens. I love that show….” Fury looked into the camera. “Steve Rogers has been with us for, um, forever. Right, Steve?” 

Steve tilted his head. “Well, I don’t know,” he smiled a little wider. Fury interrupted him.

“If you think he was small now, you should have seen him a couple years ago. Baby face.”

Steve’s forehead wrinkled, “What?” Fury feigned innocence and moved on to the next subject.

“Uh, any new messages?” he asked Steve. The smaller man shook his head, moving on as well.

“Um, yeah, just a fax.” Steve grabbed a sheet of paper off the desk in front of both of them and gave it to his boss. 

“Oh, Steve, this is from corporate. How many times have I told you that there’s a special filing cabinet for things from corporate?”

“You haven’t told me--”

“It’s called the wastepaper basket!” Fury chucked the now crumpled up paper behind the receptionist desk and laughed uncomfortably loud, too loud for the front corner of the office. Steve didn’t laugh, just stared resentfully, still messing with the pen in his hand. 

Fury sat in his office, his olive green walls framing his bald head fittingly. “People say I am the best boss. They go ‘God, we’ve never worked in a place like this before. You’re hilarious. And you get the best out of us.’ Um...I think this pretty much sums it up.” He picked up a white coffee mug from his desk that said  **WORLD’S BEST BOSS** on it in black letters. “I think this pretty much sums it up.” A moment went by, Fury proudly holding his mug up. He spoke again.

“I found it at Spencer Gifts.”

A tall man in a grey suit unlocked his desk drawer and took out a black handset cord, plugging it into his telephone, his short, curly-haired head bobbing up and down. Bucky sat in the background at his own desk, his chin in his hand. He looked as bored as he did hours ago. Bucky blinked a couple of times and looked into the camera.

“My job is to speak to clients, um, on the phone about...uh, quantities and uh, type of copier paper,” Bucky explained, his collar loose around his neck. He shook his head in a detached-like interest. “You know, whether we can supply it to them, whether they can...pay for it.” He stopped and chuckled, giving up. “I’m- I’m boring myself just talking about this.”

Fury walked briskly out of his office over to Bucky at his desk. He bent down close to meet the dark-haired man’s eyeline. “Whhhattt’sss uppp??!!!” 

Bucky jumped and scooted away from him, but recovered quickly to please, for lack of a better term, his boss. “What’s uppp?! Ha, I still love that after seven years.” He glanced over at Sam, wondering if he would catch on. Fury started again.

“Whattt’sss uppp?!” 

Sam caught on, but not in the way Bucky would have liked. He loudly joined Fury. “Whattt’sss uuup?!”

Fury, now wanting to exceed his own joke, continued his ‘What’s up?!’ Bucky stared at him, an expecting smile on his face. Fury finished and straightened up, the two salesmen finally going back to the customer’s lists they were going through. After a couple seconds, Bucky realized Fury wasn’t done with his attention-seeking act and leaned back in his chair. An awkward amount of time went by before Fury walked back into his office, telling his employees to get back to work.


	2. Maria Hill-Gould

Steve and Bucky looked at the door instinctively when it squeaked. A female voice drifted through the front of the office, turning more heads. “Just try to reach him sometime today. Um, I don’t know, just before lunch. That would be great.”

“Corporate doesn’t really interfere with me at all. Maria Hill-Gould...I call her Hillary Rodham Clinton,” Nick Fury laughed, leaning forward, his forearms on his desk. “Right? Not to her face because uh- Well, not because I’m scared of her. Because I’m not.” Fury cleared his throat and looked away from the camera. His body stiffened slightly, now worried that the crew behind the camera would bring up his comparative joke to his boss.

Maria settled into the plastic chair next to Fury, tugging at her pencil skirt minutely, and held out a piece of paper in front of her. Steve sat a couple of chairs away from her, holding a notepad and the same pen as he was earlier. 

“All right, was there anything you wanted to add to the agenda?” Maria asked, sounding open-minded. Fury furrowed his eyebrows.

“Mmm...me no get an agenda.”

“What? I’m sorry?”

“I didn’t get an agenda,” Fury repeated honestly. It was Maria’s turn to look confused. She shook her head.

“Well, I faxed one over to you this morning.”

Fury stumbled over his words to reply while Steve fidgeted in his seat. His boss looked over at him. “Did we get a fax this morning?”

“Uh, yeah, the one--”

“Then why- why isn’t it in my hand? Because a company runs on efficiency of communication,” Fury added, looking back at Maria. “Right? Just--” He imitated shooting a gun at no one in particular. “Um, so what’s the problem, Steve? Why didn’t uh, why didn’t I get it?”

“You put it in the garbage can that was a special filing cabinet,” Steve straightforwardly answered. Maria scoffed and looked down at the only agenda they now had. Fury looked down at his hands as well, thinking of a way to get out of the situation Steve purposely put him in. But not because he was scared of what Maria might say.

“Yeah…. That was a joke. Uh, that was a joke that was actually my cousin’s. And it was supposed to be with bills, and it doesn’t work with great faxes,” Fury explained as Maria nodded. 

“Do you wanna look at mine?” she asked, cutting his sentence off.

“Yeah. Yeah I would. Thank you.”

“Okay, since the last meeting, Alan and the board have decided that we can’t justify a Brooklyn branch and a Hempstead branch.”

Steve looked up from the notes he was taking down, surprised at the disconcerting news Maria had just said. Fury spoke a few syllables without forming a sentence.

“Nick, don’t panic--”

“No, no, no this is good. This is good. This is fine, excellent--”

“Nick, listen, okay, don’t panic--”

Fury shook his head and laughed nervously. “Although alarm bells are kinda going ringy dingy dingy!”

“We haven’t made any decisions yet. I’ve spoken to Jasper in Hempstead. I’ve told him the same as you, and it’s up to either you or him to convince me that your branch can incorporate the other,” Maria said smartly. “This does, however, mean that there’s going to be downsizing.”

“Me no wanna hear that, Maria. Because downsizing is a bitch. It is a  _ real  _ bitch,” Fury said, not totally believing what Maria was telling him. “And I wouldn’t wish that on Jasper’s men…. I certainly wouldn’t wish it on my men!” Steve listened halfheartedly now. He’d been working at the office for too long and could read Fury’s mind; he wouldn’t downsize anyone anytime soon. Fury finished his unconvincing spiel awkwardly, patting Maria’s knee with the agenda paper. 

“Sorry. So uh, is Jasper concerned about downsizing himself? Not downsizing himself! But is he concerned with downsizing? Another question: how long do we have to follow this?”

Maria didn’t answer any of the questions, wanting to move the meeting along. “So do you think we could keep a lid on this for now? I don’t want to worry people unnecessarily.”

“No, absolutely. Under this regime, it will not leave this office,” Fury promised, pointing at the small office room he called his own.

Darcy leaned over onto her colleague T’Challa’s desk so their conversation wouldn’t be overheard. “So what does downsizing, like, actually mean?” T’Challa opened his mouth to answer when another man came walking over.

“Guys, you need to start updating your resumes, just like I’m doing,” Bruce said quietly. They all nodded, looking serious.

“It wouldn’t feel like the end of the world to lose this job, but it feels like. Like when your favorite song comes on the radio just as you pull into your garage,” Darcy said wistfully. T’Challa stared at her. Bruce was looking over at his fellow accountants who had just heard the news.

“I bet it’s going to be me. It’s probably gonna be me,” Riley said. Kevin looked at him.

“Yeah, it’ll be you,” he answered, matter-of-factly.

Bucky leaned over the receptionist desk, his hands hanging close to Steve’s face. Steve looked at him, poorly holding a smile back. “So, I have an important question for you.” Bucky looked down at him, tilting his head.

“Yes?”

“Um, are you going to Riley’s cat party on Sunday?” Steve whispered, laughing as he talked. He was smiling all the way now. 

Bucky choked on his laugh as he playfully scolded Steve: “Yeah, stop. C’mon, that is ridiculous.” Steve pursed his lips trying to stop himself from smiling again, to be serious for Bucky’s lame joke. “I’m going! I’m even wearing a sweater, even though it’s September and warm.” Steve laughed aloud again.


	3. Tony the Temp

“Am I gonna tell them? No, I’m not going to tell them. I don’t see the point of that. As a doctor, you would not tell a patient if they had cancer,” Nick Fury answered, completely missing the irony of what he was rambling about. He walked out of his office to find a young man with dark hair and a nice, ironed suit waiting by the receptionist desk. 

“Hey!” Fury said questioningly, yet positively. The young man immediately took his hand and shook it.

“This is Mr. Fury,” Steve said, gesturing to his boss.

“Guilty! Guilty as charged.”

“Tony Stark from the temp agency. Daniqua sent me down to start today.”

“Stark, like Stark Industries, Howarddd. The big shot. Howard the Duck!” Fury laughed at his continuous joke.

“Yeah, Howard Stark is my father,” Tony smiled tensely. Fury blinked and cleared his throat.

“Well, you know, I’m sort of a student of comedy. Uh, here, watch this,” Fury ran over to a desk with stacks of binders. He grabbed a black one and balanced it on top of his head. He stuck his chin out and recited: “Forty seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this country, a new nation, convinced in liberty and dictated that all men are created equal.”

The office went silent as everyone watched his embarrassing, and rather offensive, act of comedy. Tony kept the tense grin on his face as Fury bowed and the binder clattered to the floor.

Steve tilted his head, his innocent eyes shined bright. “I don’t think it would be the worst thing if they let me go. Because then I might-- I just, I don’t think it's a little boy’s dream to be a receptionist.” Steve paused and sat up slightly. “Um, I like to draw. I sometimes do free-lance drawings. Um, mostly oil paint, a lot of graphite. Um...Bucky thinks they’re good.” Steve grinned.

“Sure. Uh, Mr. Davis, let me call you right back,” Bucky said in a polite voice, “Yeah, something just came up. Just two minutes. Thank you very much.” Bucky hung up the phone and tightened his jaw. “Sam, what are you doing?”

“What?” Sam replied. The camera panned over to the obstructive man pushing Bucky’s piles of papers that happened to hang over his own with a ruler.

“What are you doing?”

“Just clearing my desk, I can’t concentrate.”

“It’s not on your desk,” Bucky said, anger pulsing through his limbs. He had had a headache all day and God knows Sam making any distracting action or noise would make it worse.

“It’s all spilling over the edge. One word, two syllables: demarcation,” Sam said smartly, reacting to Bucky’s annoyed body language. Bucky stared at him for a second before getting up and walking over to the storage shelf and grabbing three packs of sharpened pencils. He sat back down at his desk, roughly opening the packages, shaking his head. But only slightly because of the headache he had decided to call Wilson. Minutes later, his desk looked like a dangerous, yellow, fenced-in playground. Sam glanced at the line between their two desks.

“You can’t do that.”

“Why not?” Bucky asked innocently.

“Safety violation. I could fall and pierce...an organ.”

Bucky nodded and crossed his fingers, “We’ll see.” Sam looked at him, stunned for a moment, before grabbing his handset and shoving each pencil into the crack between their desks. Bucky turned and scornfully smiled at the camera. “See, this is why the whole downsizing thing just doesn’t bother me.” 

Sam abruptly stopped making noise. “Downsizing?”

“Downsizing? Yeah, I have no problem with that. I have been recommending downsizing since I first got here,” Sam said, intensely staring at the camera. “I even brought it up in my interview. I say bring it on.”

**Author's Note:**

> Before anyone criticizes me, no, I do not see Nick Fury as Michael, Tony Stark as Ryan, and other characters and so on. But this is supposed to be a fun, stucky-based parody! I'm breaking this down into scenes, I guess? Introduction, Jan, downsizing, etc. Some will be shorter than others. And before anyone asks where I've been for the past month and a half, which I'm sure they will not, I started school and just haven't been writing recreationally. 
> 
> I mentioned this in my last Marvel work: It would be really cool if you guys would leave prompts and ideas in the comments! I'm composing a list right now. I would give credit to the person(s) whose idea(s) I use. And just leaving comments on what you think, in general, would be great!
> 
> Hope everyone is doing well, staying safe, and wearing a mask! Remember to vote if you're legal! Thank you for reading!
> 
> \- J


End file.
